Too Transparent - Christianity Today

Our regular elders meeting was set for that evening, but after two police detectives visited my office in the morning, my news became our agenda.

“My son was charged today,” I told the elders. “He was involved in the fire that burned down the children’s wing of the church.”

The men were as stunned as I was. I told them everything, and I felt from the expressions on their faces, from their tears and consoling gestures, that they supported me. After an hour, I had said all there was to say and left. The meeting, however, continued until midnight.

I took an induced 90-day leave of absence.

On Sunday, my wife, Marie, and I stood before the congregation and told them the news. So much had happened to us in recent years, there wasn’t a lot of our tribulation the church didn’t know. But the trials, and the pledge I made to myself to be open about them, had taken its toll on my ministry. I wasn’t sure—after 22 years as senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church—that I would return from the unexpected time off.

The losing streak

On Valentine’s Day five years earlier, I found the first Valentine’s card I had ever given Marie. As I embraced her, I told her how grateful I was for our 25 years together, our four children, our parents who were all still living, and a ministry together that had known many blessings and few problems.

What I said next seems, in retrospect, prophetic: “But, we won’t arrive at the end of the next 25 years like we have these. Almost everything will change. Our parents will die, our children will leave home, and we will face hardships like we have never known.”

The next day Marie and an associate pastor walked into my office. I saw the look in my wife’s eyes. “Is it one of the children?”

“No,” she said.

“My father?”

She nodded. “He was killed in a car crash—collided with a truck.”

Dad’s death was the first event in a six-year gauntlet.

In May a woman stopped me in the worship center after a Wednesday night service. “A few of us have concerns about the contemporary service. We would like to meet with you.” I had begun to see signs that not everyone was happy about the new service, although it was full every Sunday. I arranged a date to meet with the woman and her group.

I walked into a room of 60 people. One of them handed me a 10-page list documenting their “concerns.” They began to speak, frequently punctuating the comments with “We love you pastor, but—” This was uncharted water for me.

Ninety people showed up for a second meeting in June.

In July, at a special business meeting, I could sense a tear in the fabric of our church. I tried to hold the meeting (and the church) together, but dozens of people in attendance that night never returned to our church. The front eventually grew quiet, and by November, the elders, staff, and I felt we had survived the worship war. We had a truce on the issue of worship styles for a time, until the day the contemporary worship band resigned and went to another church.

In the meantime, if we were to move ahead, we had to put this crisis behind us. The church had to get healthy again, and I felt the same way about myself. I didn’t expect grief would last so long, and compounded by church conflict, I was emotionally drained. I was hardly prepared for the next episode.

Another crash

The doorbell rang at six a.m. “Two policemen want to see you,” my daughter said, meeting me at the doorway of our bedroom. Marie looked out the window. Our oldest son’s car was not there.

“We can’t find any identification,” one officer said, “but we believe it to be your son Jason. We need you to make an identification at the emergency room.”

I felt sick. “Is he alive?”

The officer looked down. “We don’t have that information, but he was alive at the scene.”

Barely alive. Jason was comatose.

After 19 days he opened one eye. We glimpsed a ray of hope. But the doctors told us our 19-year-old son had sustained permanent brain damage. His recovery would come in baby steps, and he would never be fully restored. Marie and I prepared ourselves and the rest of the family for this new life with Jason. After five months in a rehabilitation hospital, Jason came home.

I was thankful my son was alive, but I couldn’t get past our losses. With one tragedy after another, the grief was killing me. With the psalmist David, I could say “I sink in the miry depths, where there is no foothold; I have come into the deep waters; the floods engulf me. I am worn out calling for help; my throat is parched; my eyes fail, looking for my God” (Ps. 69: 2-3).

I open up, they shut down

My staff and I attended a Willow Creek seminar during this period. Until this time, I mostly kept my feelings to myself. I didn’t want the congregation to tire from endless stories of my family’s struggles, so I was guarded in my sermons. But pastor Bill Hybels spoke with remarkable transparency about his personal therapeutic journey.

At a break during the conference, we all talked about Bill’s candor. We talked about our relationship as a team, how together we needed to venture into deeper community. I felt we forged an unofficial and mutual covenant to share our personal struggles that would take us to a new level of intimacy and support. Hybels had connected so effectively because he shared his struggles.

So I began to open up to my staff and elders. They seemed genuinely concerned about my condition. I shared with some of them about the depression I had battled since my son’s accident, and this nagging, gnawing sense of loss. Some of the staff shared their own struggles, but no one ventured as deeply into theirs as I did mine.

One Sunday, in an unplanned moment, I revealed my inward struggle with the congregation. During the first service, I had slugged my way through the sermon. I felt numb, totally shut down emotionally. Between services, I prayed for some infusion of strength. None came. I wanted to flee the platform, but there was no postponing the next service. Should I fake it or tell them the truth?

Words spilled from my mouth. “Church, you need to pray for me. My emotions have flat-lined this morning. I struggled through the first service, but I don’t feel like doing it again. Will you pray that God will see me through?”

People still talk about that Sunday. Some say I endeared myself to them because they had never known a pastor to be so honest. Public transparency was proving to be my friend, but I soon learned that’s about as transparent as I want to get. In 17 years, there had not been a whole lot about which to be transparent. But with our personal losses, the church conflict, and my growing depression, there was much I could share.

I began to reveal my struggles more frequently to staff members and elders. They cared, but there wasn’t much they could do. I found my revelations had a short shelf life. Seldom did anyone follow up after our meetings and hallway conversations. Maybe they didn’t know what to do or what to say. Eventually, I felt that no one cared for my soul. It was not their fault; I had put them in an awkward position.

Some closest to me began to question whether I was limping too badly to lead. They wondered about my emotional health as a result of this long-term stress. I sensed subtle, but polite erosion of professional respect.

Eventually the church seemed paralyzed on every front. Morale was sinking.

That’s when we got another early morning phone call.

Flame out

“The church is on fire! You better get over there right away!” It was our church administrator shouting through the receiver. On the coldest day of winter that year, I sat in my car with the heater on full blast, in a parking lot across the street from the church, watching the children’s wing burn.

I met with the media off and on all day and answered scores of questions. “Why would anyone set fire to a church?” “Is someone angry at the church?”

Detectives quizzed me. “Do you have any idea who might have started this fire?”

I didn’t.

Marie and I wondered who might have done such an awful thing. Our rocky journey with the church in recent years was not without its effect on our children, and Marie even checked our son’s shoes after the early morning phone call. It had been snowing, and she wanted to see if he had been out. The shoes were dry and we were relieved. Frankly, I forgot about our fleeting suspicion until the police called again in August, seven months later, right before the elders meeting.

What I learned while talking too much

The following Sunday morning, after telling the congregation about my son’s involvement in the fire and our 90-day leave, we walked off the platform and into exile. Any renewal from our vacation only a week earlier was lost, and the worship band’s departure en masse while we were away seemed unimportant. We felt cut off from everyone.

I had been honest with the congregation. Marie and I were hurt by our son’s arrest. Now our dreams seemed like ashes, and my future ministry doubtful.

I couldn’t hide the arson or Jason’s accident, and everyone knew about the dissention in the church, but had I been too open about my despair? Had I betrayed myself by allowing my church, especially those closest to me, to see how hurt I was, how deep and lasting my grief? I sat with Leith Anderson, pastor of Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, one afternoon, and discussed my transparency.

“People want to know you’re human, but not much more,” he concluded.

I haven’t given up on vulnerability, and I still aspire to authenticity, but I have learned from the pain of being too transparent.

Transparency must have boundaries, in terms of depth and frequency. Too much transparency will have adverse effects, regardless of motivation. I thought candor with my inner circle would draw us closer, but instead it eroded their confidence.

Need is no excuse for overexposure. Some people are naturally guarded. Others have greater need to be open, to seek encouragement in troubled times, but they can be like Hezekiah, who revealed everything in his house (2 Kings 20:13) and lived to regret it. Personality should not dictate the degree to which a pastor reveals inner conflicts. Now I’m operating on a “need-to-know basis” rather than a “need-to-tell basis.”

People talk. A pastor is likely to hear from a third party what has been shared in private. And even those things told in a public setting, such as an elders meeting or a worship service, demonstrate amazing drift after two or three repeatings. These days, I tell myself, Your revelations may come back to haunt you. Heavy matters should be limited to a small circle of proven confidantes.

Wounded healers can get hurt twice. All effective leaders confront stunning pain sooner or later. That experience qualifies them to minister to wounded people, but the wounded do not need to know the details of their pastor’s pain. It is enough for them to know that pastors suffer, too. The therapist need not share the couch.

Oswald Sanders wrote, “The crowd doesn’t recognize a leader until he’s gone; then they build a monument for him with the stones they threw at him in life.”

The too-transparent pastor may think he’s sharing monumental personal experience, but instead he may be only handing out stones that disillusioned congregants will turn against him.

Pain can overshadow ministry. In a prolonged period of pain, a pastor can struggle for balance between revelation and resolution. The congregation has a right to be suspect of their pastor’s well-being when they hear many accounts of battles and few reports of victories.

Transparency ministers effectively when the pastor who has survived the conflict can report how God worked to bring him and his family through the difficulty. Not every story must be told in intimate detail as it happens. Painful episodes become more uplifting given time, perspective, and the judicious choice of words.

Recovery cannot be delegated. It is a mistake to think that the congregation will nurse a hurting pastor back to health. A few will come to the pastor’s aid, but not many will see his need. The struggling leader must take responsibility for his own well being, and seek support outside his church relationships.

Can we trust you again?

While my family and I were on leave, the elders were meeting, often and long, without me. The board was split over my fitness to return. One member was adamant: “Our pastor needs therapy, and so does his family. We need to set conditions for his return.” When Marie and I were invited to the elders meeting a month later, the requirements were set before us. We were working through our family issues, but the expectations they laid out were impossible to achieve.

We turned to a mediator whose services one of the elders had secured. The mediator was impartial and unemotional. In several sessions, he encouraged people to say “the final 10 percent,” the things they had held back, the really hard stuff. The most painful meeting was with the staff. One by one, they spoke about my shortcomings and mistakes. I scratched copious notes, all the while dying inside. “If Al were to stay on as pastor, it would take a miracle,” one associate said. Most of the staff, I heard later, had contingency plans.

At the break, I pulled the consultant into another room. “This meeting is going downhill,” I told him. “When we go back in there, I have to know whether or not they plan to follow me if I stay. I have to know if we have a team.”

I don’t remember what was said, but the tone of the meeting changed in the second half. I left more hopeful.

In mid-December, I returned to work and to the pulpit. The holiday season was like a sedative. One by one I met with the staff over the next couple of weeks. We reviewed the past few years, and at the end of each session, I looked each person in the eye and said, “I make you a promise: if the winds of God do not blow through this church in the next 90 days, I will resign.”

Miracle on 38th Street

The first Saturday of the new year, I was reading Genesis 32 for my devotions. The text drew me in like it was my own experience. As with Jacob’s dreaded reunion with Esau, I laid before God own my fears about the future. I even dared, like Jacob, to demand God’s blessing.

Late that night, I met with two faithful men to pray for the services the next day. We pled with tears for our church, and we sensed with unusual power the presence of the Spirit of God.

On Sunday, the people seemed unusually cheerful and upbeat. Attendance was up in both services, and I felt better than I had in five years. Though we still had challenges ahead, the miracle had happened.

And it continues now, two years later. All but one of the staff stayed, and the one who resigned remains active in the church. We’ve added a third service, and we’re planning to relocate from our cramped three acres on West 38th Street to a spacious 31 acres.

Jason lives at home. He’s making progress. He walks slowly and with difficulty, continues therapy, and works two mornings per week. My younger son also lives at home. He is on probation, and is fulfilling his legal obligations from his involvement in the fire.

During my leave of absence, I heard the story of a general who was severely wounded in battle. He told a captain to bring his coat. The captain was bewildered at the request. The general said, “The troops can see some blood, but they cannot see me hemorrhage.” I had shown my troops too much blood.

Bandaged and healing, I have since learned that some of my wounds I inflicted myself.

I haven’t surrendered the value of transparency, but I am more careful about when, to whom, and how much I reveal.

Al Detter is pastor of Grace Baptist Church, Erie, Pennsylvania adetter@grace-erie.org